by C. Gockel
He heard footsteps that could only be Volka’s: light, but quick and determined. He was simultaneously ecstatic that she was alive, pained that she was distressed, and terrified that he carried the Dark on his suit and that it would infect her. He wanted to warn her but couldn’t make his lips move.
A male voice replied, “He is staying with Gate 5. He can help there.” Alaric knew that voice: James Sinclair, Archbishop Sato’s brother-in-law—or “machine-in-law.” He would have smiled at the witticism if he could. He was disconnected from his body. At first that had been good. When he’d been connected, he’d existed in a world of blinding agony. Now he knew that he was being cradled by Sinclair, that the android was holding him aloft, keeping the shard of the Merkabah that pierced his torso from moving, but he couldn’t feel it.
Volka knelt beside him an instant later and grasped his gloved left hand in her own. She wore an envirosuit—she was completely safe—he couldn’t smile or even exhale in relief. Was he breathing? He didn’t think so. He was dead. The brain could continue functioning for a few minutes after death. He was going to fade into oblivion and final unconsciousness with his hand in Volka’s. There could be worse fates. He wanted to smile again. There was a commotion around him, and he thought of Alexis, Sam, Markus, and Lucas—and he didn’t want to be dead anymore—he needed to protect them from the Dark.
“Am I going to lose them both today?” he heard Volka whisper with so much pain in her voice it would have pierced Alaric’s heart if he could still feel his organs.
James answered, “6T9 is resilient, and we’ll bring the captain back.”
Alaric knew what that meant and prepared for pain. The shapes around him swooped down. The pain came but he couldn’t scream.
Somewhere far off, he heard Volka whisper, “I’m here. I’m here.”
Alaric’s hand was gripping Volka’s with enough strength to hurt, even with her gloves on. He was lying on his side on a stretcher held by Ramirez and James. A wire was protruding from an outlet in his envirosuit above his heart. The other side of it was linked into an outlet in Young’s helmet. Young’s eyes were vacant, and he was leaning slightly on Rhinehart. He’d saved Alaric by etherly connecting to a Fleet doctor and an engineer in Time Gate 1’s hospital—experts in envirosuit life-support. They’d told Young what to do when he hardlinked with Alaric’s suit and were still feeding him instructions so he could make second by second adjustments. Sixty could have done it better. He was the one with the medical experience. She bit her lip, wishing he was here. She hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye…
They were in a decon chamber, surrounded by infrared heaters, cooking any potential infection from their suits.
Bracelet was repeating over and over again, “Do not open your visor. The heat will destroy your lungs, Miss Volka!”
“I know, Bracelet.”
“Still too hot,” Bracelet reiterated.
“I know.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Bracelet said.
Carl, safe in his sausage suit and clasped in Rhinehart’s arms, growled, “She knows!”
Alaric’s hand started to loosen in Volka’s. Young inhaled sharply.
“Stay with me,” Volka whispered. She couldn’t lose Alaric. She couldn’t help feeling like she’d already lost Sixty. Sixty’s leaving had been too sudden. One minute he was going to help Alaric—which had been so very much like him. The next minute she’d run onto the bridge and found him gone, Alaric dead, and James making some excuse about Sixty being needed on Time Gate 5. She closed her eyes. There were a lot of people trapped there, and the battle for the gate was still ongoing. If the Dark used a time gate to hop to every corner of the galaxy, it wouldn’t need the ships it had stolen from Reich. Sixty was very clever—he’d known the Dark was coming before anyone else, he’d out-werfled the pirates on the Copperhead, and he’d divined the Dark’s plans to infect them on System 33. It wasn’t just an excuse. The people on Time Gate 5 did need him. She bit her lip. But so did she.
Alaric’s hand was still limp.
“Alaric, come back to me.”
Young’s head jerked back, and Alaric sucked in a loud breath. Though Alaric’s eyes did not open, his hand tightened on hers.
“You’re all successfully decontaminated,” Bracelet declared. “Now we just have to wait for you to cool down—”
The door opened.
James said, “Let’s go,” and he, Ramirez, and Young strode into the hallway beyond. Volka had to jog to keep up, and Young stumbled. Rhinehart helped Young keep his footing with her free hand. Jerome shouted to the few people in the hallway, “Stay back. We’re hot from decon.” The rest of the team brought up the rear as they ferried Alaric into the hospital wing and a waiting operating room. There were doctors and nurses preparing very strange equipment, including a bed with a mattress of greenish gel. James laid Alaric on his side and the gel sizzled with the heat of his suit. A man in blue-green scrubs and heat-resistant gloves started stripping off Alaric’s armor. A needle flashed through the air and went into Alaric’s chest just above his heart. Alaric’s eyes bolted open, and he grimaced. He didn’t breathe a word, but his hand tightened on Volka’s. Someone grabbed Volka by the shoulders and began pulling her back. “You’ll be all right, they’ll take care of you,” she called to him.
She didn’t know if he heard, but his hand loosened, and his pale blue eyes slipped closed.
She looked over her shoulder to see a woman in green scrubs. She let herself be guided away, but at the door she dug in her heels and spun around.
She had to rescue Sixty, but Alaric was not allowed to die. Gritting her teeth, she bowed her head and took a deep breath. She felt the air hit her lungs. Felt blood pounding through her, picking up the precious oxygen, carrying it through her body. Deep in her gut she felt something more. Her fingers twitched, and she raised her eyes to the medical team. They were all tied together, every person in this room, threads in a cloth that extended from here to the end of the universe, and Volka could pull the edges. “You will take care of him,” she heard herself command them. Her voice was a whisper, barely audible with the commotion in the room, but the words flowed smooth as liquid and light as a breeze. The fabric of the universe tightened between her and every other person in the room and people she couldn’t see beyond the walls.
Everyone stopped and turned to her. The nurse whose hands were on her shoulders, had been whispering for her to leave, but now she stopped.
“Yes, of course,” said a woman in scrubs, gazing at Volka with laser-like intensity. She spun to the others in the room. “You heard her. We must do this.”
Releasing Volka’s shoulders, the nurse who’d been urging her to leave echoed, “We must do this,” and walked toward Alaric.
The commotion began again, and this time, Volka felt safe leaving. She also felt suddenly weary. Leaving the operating room, she found the Marines. Rhinehart was still holding Carl. In her arms, he squeaked and spoke into Volka’s mind, “You’re progressing so fast, Hatchling!”
Volka stopped short. “What?”
“The mind control. It was all the more impressive because you didn’t seem to know that you were doing it,” Carl replied, thankfully telepathically.
As if on cue, Young approached her. Putting a hand on her shoulder, he said, “We’d stay and make sure they take care of him, but we’re being ordered to a debriefing.”
A man wearing the scrubs of a nurse approached her from down the hall. “I’ll make sure that he is taken care of, not to worry,” and entered the operating room before Volka could reply.
Volka stuttered, “I think…I think…I need a moment.”
Young patted her shoulder and said, “I have a feeling we’ll be seeing you soon.”
He motioned for his team, and Rhinehart handed her Carl. Watching them retreat, Volka’s breathing came hard and fast.
“Volka,” Carl said telepathically. “It was an accident. We need to get to Sixty.”
She looked down at him. His little ears were adorably perked, and his eyes were wide and imploring.
And then she felt it. The pull of the fabric that made the universe, but this time it was Carl pulling her. “Don’t you dare try to manipulate me,” she snarled, at him and her own hypocrisy.
Carl bubbled with happiness that felt like slipping into a warm bath. “Excellennntttt.” He nodded fast. “You’re becoming so strong.” He cocked his head. “We still have to get to Sixty.” There was no pull now, just a cold statement of fact. Volka gulped. She had to pull herself together. What had just happened in the operating room was hardly the worst thing she’d ever done. “Right.” She stared down at Bracelet. Sixty hadn’t said goodbye. Probably because he was too busy and skirting danger. Still, she couldn’t resist… “Bracelet, can you connect me to Sixty?”
“Yes, of course!” Bracelet exclaimed and gave a long hum.
Carl under one arm, Volka set off down the hall. They reached the hospital exit, and Volka whispered, “Bracelet?”
“I can’t connect…it’s just…gray.”
A speaker on the wall cracked, and the familiar voice of Time Gate 1 rumbled through the waiting room. “6T9 is busy. It would be potentially dangerous for me to allow you to speak with him at the moment.”
Volka broke into a run. Reaching out to Sundancer, she felt the ship’s readiness, and, in her arms, Carl sniffed. “Risking his synthetic hide without us! The nerve.”
The airlock to Sundancer’s berth was open. Volka charged through, and then drew up short. Standing in front of Sundancer, hands clasped behind his back, eyes on the door she’d just entered, was James. There was a baggage hover behind him, and men in Fleet grays touching their neural ports and scanning its contents. They looked like they were preparing to load Sundancer up, as though Sundancer belonged to them.
“What are you doing?” Volka demanded, striding toward the android. Righteous anger flooded her, and she felt the fabric of the universe around her again. Tugging on it happened as naturally as her next breath, but James didn’t budge—not mentally, anyway. The techs all turned around, though. One opened his mouth, but before he could speak, James answered her question. “Hoping that you’ll help us defeat the Dark.”
Volka’s footsteps slowed. “I have to go to Time Gate 5!” she insisted.
She couldn’t read him like a human, and she focused on his face. Usually she found him a blank slate—Sixty had told her something about him not liking to get “emotion updates” that wouldn’t work with his “outdated operating system”—but she swore his eyes softened slightly, and his shoulders fell.
“Volka…” He shifted on his feet. “I am glad Sixty found you.”
Under her arm, Carl sniffed. “Let us find him. Now.”
Volka lifted her chin.
James looked between the two of them. “I can’t stop you, but 6T9 doesn’t need you on Time Gate 5, and you and Carl can best help humanity elsewhere.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “We desperately need your help.”
Volka’s nostrils flared. Carl stiffened in her grip, and then his body sagged. He sighed, and Volka swore she could feel his dual hearts sink in his tiny chest. “I wasn’t thinking clearly, James.” He squeaked sadly. “You’re right. We must help you.”
“But Sixty’s alone!” Volka protested.
“He’s not alone,” Carl said. “He’s in System 5. Every machine there is programmed to recognize him. They’ll fight for him, like the ColdSWEEPER did.”
Volka bit her lip. It was like Sixty to sacrifice himself like this. He’d saved Volka from the Luddeccean Guard even though she thought he was a monster. And Sixty knew they had to go after Alexis before Volka would admit it.
She wanted to be with him—he probably wanted to be with her. She hoped he did. Her heart rate sped up, and her hands got clammy. She couldn’t read Sixty like a human…
James put a hand on her shoulder. “Volka, he changed his programming for you. He’ll find his way back to you.”
It was as though he’d heard her thoughts. Volka looked up at the other android.
James’s lips quirked. “We’re rather binary about such things.”
She knew what binary meant—one and zero, on and off, yes and no. Sixty asked her to marry him. So he meant it. Even if it had been sudden. Even if they weren’t suited. But they could be, if he wanted to be. Monogamy was just a flip of a switch to him, and even if he’d never expressed a real interest in monogamy, he could be that way. Her thoughts spun.
James’s smile faded. “And when he does come back to you, he’ll have fully integrated his updates.”
“What does that mean?” Volka asked.
Pulling back, James frowned, and he looked over her shoulder. Familiar boot steps rang in the airlock, and familiar emotions and scents. Lieutenant Young spoke at his usual eardrum-rattling volume. “Carl and Volka, we’ve got your help, right?”
The question was delivered boisterously, and yet Volka felt a tinge of uncertainty behind it. She felt that uncertainty in the other Marines, too, and desperation, and necessity…they had a mission, a universe-altering mission…They needed her. They hoped she would be with them. They mostly expected she would say yes—they had faith in her—but there was the faintest doubt. Their faith and hope tugged at her—they weren’t pulling at the fabric of the universe, but they might as well have been. Carl sighed into her mind. “Hope can do that better than any yank of the wave.”
She couldn’t say no. She turned around, and before she even knew what she was agreeing to, she said, “Of course.” It wasn’t just the Marines she saw; it was Dr. Patrick, the scientist that had come with them to Reich, too. He scowled at her—or maybe she felt his scowl rather than saw it—but she didn’t have time to probe what it meant.
She turned back to James, a question on her lips, but his eyes were on the distance, and he was striding away, tapping his neural port. A moment later, he disappeared through the airlock doors, and Volka swallowed, her tenuous connection with Sixty…gone.
31
Android General 1
Galactic Republic: Time Gate 5
6T9 was inside Time Gate 5’s airlock. A dark, cramped space filled with random bits of machinery, it was built for the mech ‘bots that came to the aid of malfunctioning craft hauled by tugs. Not built for humans, it also hadn’t been designed with decon in mind. He’d traveled through the chill of the gate’s shadow, not in the heat of unshielded sunlight. The organism that transmitted the Dark could travel through space shielded from radiation in ice, and there’d been at least one clump of ice that had collided with 6T9 in his short journey. It might have been infected.
Now, with a little mech ‘bot hovering beside him, he was sorting through the bits and pieces of machinery, searching for something to toast himself with before he entered the habited portions of the gate. Over the dark mass of machine parts he searched through, in the periphery of his vision, 6T9 was replaying his memories of Volka. As soon as he’d climbed inside the airlock and out of immediate danger, he’d been unable to stop thinking about her—when he’d tried, his circuits had gone dark. So he’d stopped trying and put memories on loop, on mute. He was functional, if not optimally so.
Distracting him further was a radio feed of the Luddecceans, trapped in an airlock not fifty meters away. Gate 5 was piping their frantic, angry conversation among themselves into his mind:
“We’re trapped here!”
“It’s the gate. This is a trap.”
“It’s our enemy! We must destroy it.”
Time Gate 5’s voice entered 6T9’s mind. “I cannot let them out. It is too dangerous.” The gate’s words were not fearful, but 6T9 had no doubt it felt fear.
6T9 exhaled. One problem at a time. “Begin decon. Make sure their suits are sealed—”
“They are. There is no atmosphere in the airlock,” Gate 5 replied in its cool, toneless voice. “Their blood would boil if their suits were not sealed.”
No
t having oxygen was probably feeding their fear and paranoia. 6T9 decided not to play emotional interpreter just yet. “Alert them that you will begin decon,” 6T9 advised.
In the ensuing pause, 6T9’s eyes alighted on the innards of a circular hover coil lying half concealed by a piece of siding. Lifting it up, he found it to be nearly his height. The little mech ‘bot beeped mournfully; it didn’t have a Q-comm and couldn’t imagine that the coil could be modified to produce enough heat to sterilize the whole chamber. Grabbing a power conduit, 6T9 hauled the coil and conduit over to the only open space in the lock—right beside the exit, beneath the porthole of the door he’d just come from.
“On your suggestion, I have begun the decon process in the Luddecceans’ airlock,” Gate 5 informed him.
6T9 grunted in acknowledgment and frustration. The power cable had to be stripped of its outer casing in order to jack it into the hover coil innards. He could do it with his fingernails—but that would mean opening up his suit. His gloved fingers were too blunt.
He lifted his head heavenward in a useless show of frustration, and his gaze inadvertently went through the tiny porthole. Forces of System 5 and pirates were still battling out there, their phasers thin threads of brightness in the black. He blinked, and light—real light, not Q-comm inspiration or threads of phaser fire—flashed in his eyes. The flashes were the simplest of Morse Code messages: three quick, three long, and three quick pulses again—SOS—help. Putting the coils aside, he jumped up and grabbed a handhold beneath the window. The handhold had probably been there since before Five started rotating and providing gravity via centrifugal force, because paint chips fell from it, and it wobbled with his weight. Peering through the window, 6T9 saw a tick 22.3 meters away on a slow course for open space. Its keel had blown away, and he could see the interior. At first, he almost thought it was empty, and that the message had been computer generated, but then the light came on again—and this time didn’t cut off, but instead swept over the gate. In its glow, 6T9 saw a face he recognized. “It’s Davies,” he whispered—the Luddeccean man who’d saved Volka in the Merkabah’s brig. She’d liked him, she’d told 6T9 later, because he didn’t treat her badly for being a weere.
